While the date of this post reflects when the events described took place, in reality this entry was written long afterward. I apologize for any inaccurate details or incomplete ideas...
As with most days, we started off Wednesday morning with breakfast and the dispersion of brown-bag lunches with Bagels! (GCU loves their bagels). Today was dedicated to political Germany in a nutshell.
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First stop was the Reichstag, the famous parliament building, for a visit with MP Hans-Ulrich Klose, a seasoned politician. Below are some notes from the meeting:
Bio
-in Parliament since 1983
-previously a public prosecutor
-former Mayor (essentially Governor) of Hamburg
-appointed for a center-right gov., although he leans left
-went to high school in Clinton, Iowa '54-'55
-Born in 1937, has memory of the last years of the Nazi regime, impacted his political convictions
-Served as a Nazi prosecutor for a year
Current Affairs
-recent state elections, Liberal Christian Democratic Party lost a very stable economic state
-Green Party, founded on anti-nuclear views now a BIG party b/c of catastrophe in Japan
-Germany will probably get out of nuclear energy as soon as possible, turn to renewable energy sources.
Foreign Policy
-interest and concern for Arab countries
-Germany is a non-permanent member of the U.N. Security Council
German-Israeli Relations
-must be aware of history, but that shouldn't prevent one from criticizing a government. Does Israel believe in a two-state solution? If so, why the settlements?
Relationship to Peace Process
Germany is probably EU's strongest supporter of Israel. Germany as the confidence of both sides. There isn't enough readiness on either side yet.
Chancellor- "the security of Israel is part of our state identity"
For the first time Germany's history, she is surrounded by partners, has positive relations with her neighbors. Israel has the opposite situation.
Role in Combating Rise of Antisemitism in Europe
-Germany is occupied with its own situations, but keeping an eye on Poland and France, with increasing problems in Hungary
-Klose is not worried b/c of peace in the EU, but aware that, in his perspective, the EU lacks strong leadership. Today national interests come first, Europe comes second.
Nuclear Power
-Israel most likely a power, has first-strike capability, what about 2nd?
-1 strike by Iran and Israel may not manage a 2nd strike...small country
(Germany delivered submarines to Israel, not very public information)
Turks
-3.5 million Turks in Germany, maybe 1/2 million are citizens.
-Germany doesn't accept double-citizenship
-New law that Turks who have children here can claim them as German citizens, but they have chooose which citizenship they want when they grown up
-need for a cultural shift. up to 25% of Turks don't have degrees
-Many Europeans don't know anything about Islam, and U.S. and Europe struggle with home-grown terrorists. This makes the discussion tougher. A separation is necessary (Klose is a religious Lutheran)
After a visit to the roof, where we could see the city and the beautiful glass dome, we returned to the Centrum Judaicum for a meeting with Karsten Voigt, a former politician, and Dr. Irit Dekel, who studies memory politics, narrative construction and the urban public sphere. They discussed modern cultural and political issues, such as homosexuality and identity in sports (are you a Turkish fan or a German fan?) and German efforts to restore its lost sense of "Jewishness", which were identified as including liberalism and democracy. They talked about reparations, and what it means to put monetary value on a casualty of genocide and those who suffered through it. The discussed the museum industry in Berlin, and the difficulty of projecting a narrative that claims the host as the victim. A joke shared explained that German history is only about 20 years long, and everything else was leading up to the Third Reich. The take-away was the need to rephrase the accusation from "Because of what you did" to "Because of what happened, I want to..."
Next we stopped by at the German Federal Foreign Office. There were learned that Germany has 149 embassies, 6,000 employees, half of which work abroad, and 8 consulates. According to our speakers there is an increase in interest for Germany among American Jews. Merkel was the first German officer to address the American Jewish Committee. On a separate note, it's extremely unpopular, and difficult to take military action, because it required parliamentary approval from five parties. Therefore, Germany has little to do with military efforts abroad. The foreign office rambled about the German-Israeli relationship, from the high student-exchange rate to the legislation of Holocaust denial as a crime. Not a lot of surprises.
We concluded the day in a rather unusual place- Potsdam. A town outside of Berlin proper, Potsdam's history boasts of Prussian palaces, a Garrison Church where Hitler officially took power, one of the largest diaspora Ditch communities, and makers of excellent chocolates, and the Glienicke Bridge, where Natan Sharansky was swapped for Soviety spies.
We concluded the night at the Chabad in Berlin, where Yiddish took on a whole new meaning in a German context.
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